Arpaio's latest offense is running for Senate

Arpaio's latest offense is running for Senate

Melinda Barton
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12 January, 2018, 20:45

He was pardoned by Trump last August after a federal judge found him in contempt of court after his office refused to stop detaining people suspected of being undocumented. Despite his obvious faults and his defeat in 2016, the former sheriff still commands the loyalty of many voters and has a proven ability to raise millions of dollars from supporters across the nation.

Another name that jumped on board the conspiracy, which has since be proven false, was Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff in Arizona.

Arpaio, a longstanding Trump ally, told WABC that he still believed Obama's birth certificate was a forgery, despite the former Democratic president's decision to release it in 2011 in an attempt to put to bed so-called birther claims, which were led by Donald Trump at the time.

Arpaio's reputation and close affiliation with President Trump is virtually guaranteed to rev up the conservative base. He was one of the loudest voices in the birther movement, which suggests that the country's first black president was not born in the USA, and sent a deputy to Hawaii in 2012 to investigate.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner published Tuesday, the 85-year-old Arpaio said he meant to run for the seat Sen.

A high-resolution version of Obama's birth certificate can be downloaded from the White House website.

Arpaio announced on Tuesday that he is running for to replace Sen. Jeff Flake, who is retiring from Congress at the end of his term. He also fought on the front lines of the war against illegal aliens entering the United States and sued Barack Obama over the issue. The law enhances federal law slightly, which requires all aliens over the age of 14 who remain in the United States for longer than 30 days to register with the US government. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa also made waves last fall when he said DACA recipients would make "great" Peace Corps volunteers in their home countries, and that "none would take more hardship or risk than we ask of Peace Corp". "I'm not going to go into all the details".

Arpaio's candidacy all but guarantees that immigration will again be elevated in an election year, something that has not benefited Republicans in the past. "But, friend, I have never been one to shy away from a fight - and I can't in good conscience sit back in retirement knowing that my grandchildren will inherit a country worse off than the America I've spent my entire life defending", he said.